Article

What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack

Julie Supan, First Round Review Free Intermediate

Supan's High Expectation Customer concept adds a layer your data sort alone won't catch: among your best fit customers, find the most discerning ones, because winning them tells you the most about what your product is actually good at. She shows how she found this person concretely at Airbnb and Dropbox, which makes the abstract idea easy to copy. Read it after you've found your top decile, to sharpen who within that group matters most.

  • The most demanding customer in your best segment reveals your real value fastest
  • Winning your most discerning customers creates the strongest word of mouth
  • Identify this customer from real behavior, not from who you imagined at launch

The question it answers

  1. How do I use the customers I already have to sharpen my ideal customer profile instead of guessing?

Read with it

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  5. Seibel's whole point is that a market only counts once real customers are grabbing the product as fast as you can make it and... Michael Seibel (Y Combinator) Essay · ~4 min read The Real Product Market Fit Michael Seibel
  6. If you would rather hear the thinking than read it, this is Rahul Vohra on Lenny's Podcast talking through the same... Lenny's Podcast Podcast Superhuman's secret to success: ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every user, and positioning around one attribute | Rahul Vohra Lenny Rachitsky
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